June 22, 2006 | Clients of a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm under federal investigation have contributed at least $6.2 million to the campaigns and political action committees of House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis and other committee members, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics has found.

Lewis, a California Republican, has close ties to the firm of Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White. Former aides work there, and firm partner Bill Lowery, a former congressman, served on the appropriations committee with Lewis and remains a close friend. Since 1997, Lewis has received more than $917,000 from Copeland Lowery lobbyists and their for-profit clients, or approximately 15% of contributions the Center identified. Lewis’s haul is 11 times larger than that of the appropriations committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, who has taken in about $83,000.

In all, since 1997 Copeland Lowery’s for-profit clients have made $48.2 million in political contributions to nearly 1,300 federal candidates and committees, according to the Center. After the Republican and Democratic parties’ federal committees, Lewis is the top recipient.

His House Committee on Appropriations oversees hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding and hands out much of it to private companies and contractors through specific provisions in legislation known as “earmarks.” Those seeking earmarks heavily lobby committee members, particularly those in leadership positions, and contribute to their campaigns and the political action committees (PACs) they control. It is a small price to pay for the valuable earmarks they could potentially receive. Lewis’s plum assignment as the appropriations committee’s chairman since the beginning of 2005 has given him the most control over earmarks.

The Copeland Lowery firm has specialized in securing earmarks for its clients, and has hired away appropriations staffers to help. Clients have included telecommunications giant AT&T, aerospace and defense corporations Boeing and General Dynamics, and many other defense firms working under federal contracts.

Appropriations subcommittee chairmen, known as “cardinals,” wield great influence over the earmarking process. The cardinals with crucial jurisdictions, such as those over defense, energy, agriculture and homeland security, have been among the top recipients of contributions from Copeland Lowery and their clients. Energy and water subcommittee chairman Dave Hobson (R-Ohio), for example, has received $258,200 since 1997.

Former appropriations committee member Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) received at least $460,000 from 1998 through his resignation in 2005. Cunningham is now in prison for bribery. Implicated in the scandal is Brent Wilkes, a California defense contractor whose companies ADCS Inc. and Wilkes Corp. hired Copeland Lowery to help secure earmarks.

Federal investigators have issued subpoenas to a number of Copeland Lowery’s clients in California, seeking information on their dealings with the firm. Many of the clients are located in Lewis’s congressional district, near Palm Springs.

Former congressman Lowery served on the appropriations committee with Lewis. He became a lobbyist after resigning from the House of Representatives following a 1992 check-kiting scandal in which he and dozens of other lawmakers abused their House banking privileges.

As a lobbyist, Lowery and his partners built a firm that reported federal lobbying income totaling approximately $7.4 million in 2005—nearly double its income two years earlier. The bipartisan firm has announced it will disband along party lines, as scrutiny of the Republican partners’ business dealings has intensified.

“All the partners remain focused on their client work, discussing issues on Capitol Hill, and working with regulatory agencies every single day,” a June 16 statement from the firm said. “We continue to work on normal routine legislative funding issues as well as other federal consulting and strategic advocacy on behalf of our clients.”

A company spokesman did not provide additional comment for this article. A spokesman for the appropriations committee refused to comment on the contributions that members have received from Copeland Lowery and its clients.

Copeland Lowery helped establish itself as a highly sought-after lobbying firm by hiring away numerous appropriations committee staff members and aides to Lewis. Letitia White, a partner in the firm, was Lewis’s longtime chief of staff. She reportedly acted as his “gatekeeper,” determining which contractors received coveted earmarks.

Lewis aide Jeff Shockey also went through the “revolving door,” working for his hometown congressman, then leaving for Copeland Lowery before returning to Lewis’s committee staff in 2005. When Shockey left the lobbying firm to return to Capitol Hill as the appropriations committee’s deputy staff director, Copeland Lowery paid him nearly $2 million. The firm has said the payment was a buyout of Shockey’s ownership in the company.

The 67 House members of the 109th Congress who have served on the appropriations committee, including Cunningham until 2005, received most of the contributions from Copeland Lowery and their clients through the members’ campaign accounts. Of the $6.2 million the Center for Responsive Politics identified, about 17% of the contributions have gone to the members’ political action committees, commonly called leadership PACs. Lewis’s Future Leaders PAC has received half of the money given to the members’ PACs, equaling about $520,000.

Republicans control the House of Representatives and, accordingly, its committees. Sixty-two percent of the contributions from Copeland Lowery’s clients have gone to the party in power. Nearly three-quarters of the clients’ contributions have come from their corporate PACs; the rest have been individual contributions by the clients’ employees and their families.

It is impossible to determine from campaign finance disclosures whether the contributors were directed by their lobbyists to make the donations. Such direction is not illegal, and lobbyists acknowledge it is common. Legal political contributions become illegal bribes when they are given in exchange for official, specific action.

To determine the extent of Copeland Lowery’s influence on the appropriations committee, the Center analyzed contributions made by the lobbyists and current and former for-profit clients from 1997 through roughly the first three months of 2006. Many of Copeland Lowery’s clients retained other lobbying firms as well. In 2005, for example, Boeing reported retaining 17 other lobbying firms in addition to a staff of in-house lobbyists.

In addition to its for-profit clients, Copeland Lowery works for numerous non-profit hospitals, state and local governments and other agencies. From 1998 through 2005, these clients paid Copeland Lowery at least $13.5 million for federal lobbying.

The Center chose to exclude these non-profit clients from its analysis of contributions. Nonprofit organizations and governments typically cannot make or direct political contributions in the same way businesses can, and their employees are rarely large contributors.

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